considered the seat of this "manor." The other moiety of the manor was held of the honor of Halton by the fourth part of a knight's fee; and the second mediety of the church was given to St. Werburgh's Abbey by one of the Walley family. The tenant or mesne lord of the Halton part in the time of Edward II. was Richard Samson; by 1450 he had been succeeded by Sir Thomas Stanley of Lathom and Henry Litherland of Poulton. As in other cases where there is no record of change of ownership, the descent was probably quite regular, through heiresses.

The Becheton family, also prominent in Liscard, were considerable proprietors. Williamson says:

36 Edward III. I find that William de Becheton died [1359] seised of . . . 7 bovates of land in Wallasey, leaving his sister Alice's (married to John de Kirkby in Walley) grand-daughters his heirs.

This account, however, is not quite accurate. The heirs were William's sisters, Anilia and Ellen, and Thomas son of William, son of Robert, son of John de Kirkby Walley by Alice his wife, a third sister. The land was held in socage of Ellen de Becheton."

Thomas, first Lord Stanley, who died in 145 was found to have held three messuages and 50 acres of land in Seacombe, Liscard, Poulton and Kirkby in Walley, nothing being said of any manor." The estate was held of Robert Beconsall in socage."

The same estate of three messuages and 50 acres was held by Thomas second earl of Derby,

1 Williamson's Villare in Add. MS. 6031, f. 128d., at the British Museum.

Halton Feodary in Ormerod's Cheshire (ed. Helsby), i., 707. In a Chester Fine of 1607 the estate of John Litherland is described as the Manor of Wallasey, with messuages, lands, etc., in Wallasey, Liscard, Poulton and Seacombe.

Chester Inq. p. m., 36 Edw. III., no. 15.

4 Inquis. post mortem in Dep. Keeper's Report xxxvii., 676.

who died in 1521, of the heirs of Robert Beconsall.1 Ferdinando, the fifth earl (1595), reputed builder of the Castle, is stated to have held the manor of Wallasey; his three daughters were co-heirs. Williamson says further:

In the 40 Elizabeth William earl of Derby [brother and successor of Ferdinando] passed over this "manor by the name of Kirkby-Walley alias Walezey; and 12 James I. I find that Sir John Egerton died seised of this manor, 3 messuages, 2 tofts, 500 acres of land, 200 of meadow, 1000 of pasture, etc., and 4s. rent cum pertinentiis in Walezey, late part of the possessions of William earl of Derby ; and John Egerton is lord thereof, 1710.

Earl Ferdinando, who was born in London about 1559, seems to have been a precocious boy, matriculating at the age of twelve at St. John's College, Oxford. In 1579, as Lord Strange, he married Alice, youngest daughter of Sir John Spencer of Althorp-a union less distinguished than might have been expected for the heir of one of the great nobles of the day. He was of a literary bent, and poems of his are reputed to be contained in a collection called Belvidere, or the Garden of the Muses, published 1610, and from 1589 to 1594 he was patron of the Company of Players. He was mayor of Liverpool in 1587 and took part in raising forces to resist a possible Spanish invasion. He succeeded his father Henry, fourth earl, in 1593, but enjoyed his dignities and widespread estates but a short time, being cut off in the following April, after a painful illness, attributed by some to witchcraft and by others to poison. He was a very near heir to the crown, especially if the King of Scots were excluded as

1 Inquis. post mortem in Dep. Keeper's Rep. xxxix., 95.

Chester Fines, Sept. 40 Eliz. The claimant was Thomas Fox, who was perhaps acting for the Egertons of Egerton and Oulton, the next possessors.

Inquis. p. m. 21 James I., no. 7. The tenure was unknown. A fine of 1609 shows that the manor was then in Sir John's possession.

a foreigner-and to the Englishmen of that day King James VI. was as much a foreigner as a Spanish princess would have been-and possibly the leaders of the state were rather relieved to have a romantic and wealthy nobleman out of the way.

The heir male, his brother William, sixth earl, was abroad at the time. Disputes ensued as to the provision for Ferdinando's Ferdinando's widow and children, and these lasted some years. They were settled by an arbitration, confirmed by private acts of 4 and 7 James I., by which elaborate entails were made of great part of the estates, while others went to the widow and daughters. Lands sold by Earl William and his predecessors were excluded; this would exclude Wallasey, sold in 1598, and it is not named in the acts.

The races on the Leasowes are mentioned in King's Vale Royal, and the fact that the Duke of Monmouth rode his own horse at the races here in the autumn of 1682, has been referred to already in the Society's Transactions." The tradition that James I. attended these races is discussed in our volume for 1893. Why the original tower was built it is difficult to say. Rumour has it that it was built by Ferdinando as a stand for watching the horse races on the Wallasey course, but, as Mr. W. F. Irvine points out,3 Inasmuch as the finish of those races took place nearly two miles away, it is not a position that would commend itself to short-sighted onlookers." But for watching hawking, standing as it did almost in the centre of a plain five miles long, without a single tree, there could be few better positions. Doubtless this would have been

an excellent reason to give at the time of its erection; but there may have been others. The walls of the old tower are over 3 ft. thick, and the remains of the fosse are still to be seen. Whatever the ostensible reason for the erection of a structure so substantial that sea air and the storms of over three centuries, in an exposed situation, have failed to affect it, it is more likely that it originated in a desire on the part of the builder to be prepared for any eventuality which the disturbed times in which he lived rendered probable.

At some time four square towers were thrown out from the alternate faces, and it is owing to this that the incised dated stone is now on an inside wall. It is impossible to fix at what date the turrets were added, but they very much resemble the architecture of the Racing Stables which stood in Wallasey, and on which Mr. R. D. Radcliffe argues thus :1 "It is probable that the stables were erected between 1600 and 1642, and possibly by William 6th Earl of Derby, who passed much of his time at Bidston and refronted the Hall thereof." May not these additions to the tower have been made about the same time?

They are shown in a plan of "Wallesea Manor " of 1735, which illustrates Mr. Radcliffe's paper. Mr. Hopps, in his remarks on the older part of the building, says:

The two turrets remaining intact have each a gable over all faces and cross ridge-pieces. They have moulded coping stones and are surmounted by stone balls. Their windows are the square-headed ones with chamfered reveals and mullions and have the protective labels typical of their age. The most westerly turret is very massive and contains an old spiral stone stairway. building must have existed for fully two centuries in this

1 Trans. Hist. Soc., xlv., 141.

form of an octagon with four flanking turrets, because the next stone addition is clearly not ancient. . . .

"In the ground-floor apartment of the southern turret may be seen the lower part of the jambs of the old entrance doorway (dated 1593) . . . As the sill below them is rather more than 5 feet from the ground, it is presumable that a ramp and drawbridge for entrance originally existed, or else that a simple ladder was used, being drawn up and let down as occasion required."

As James, the seventh Earl, adhered to the King's side, the Stanleys lost heavily by the Civil War; their estates were sequestered, and much was sold outright, but there is no mention of Wallasey or Leasowe in the sequestration records. During the Commonwealth horse-racing and other "worldly sports and pastimes were suppressed by the Puritans, and it is believed that at this time the building once called the New Hall became ruinous,' and acquired the name of Mockbeggar Hall, a title given to any deserted or lonely edifice. It is marked by this name on Grenville Collin's Pilot of 1690, and the shore near the castle and lighthouse is marked in the charts of to-day as Mockbeggar Wharfe. Sometime about the end of the 17th century it was used as a farm house,' and in the parish registers of Wallasey in 1701, the burial of a son of Alice Miller of the New Hall occurs, maybe in distinction from Wallasey Old Hall, built by W. Meols in 1604.

These four square towers," to quote Ormerod again, " terminate in gables which rise above the central tower, which has a flat leaden terrace on the summit." His work was completed in 1819, i.e., nineteen years after the sketches executed by Mr. Lysons, now in the British Museum, which show the roof of the original

1 Ormerod, ii., 174 note.

• Catalogue of Sale, 15 July, 1808.